| Tesco Flowers #1 Flowers and Gifts Site for Valentine’s Day |
After Christmas and the January sales, Valentine's Day is the next big event for retailers with Tesco Flowers the big winner again this year.
Online gift shopping started two weeks before Valentine's Day, with visits to Flowers and Gifts sites increasing 25% over that period. However, year-on-year visits to the Flowers and Gifts category are down 19%, indicating that trading may not be as strong this year for flower retailers.
Tesco Flowers (www.tesco.com/flowers) took the #1 rank among Flowers and Gifts websites at the beginning of February, up from a rank of 8th, with market share of UK visits to Tesco Flowers increasing more than two-and-a-half-fold. However, Tesco Flowers' market share of UK internet visits was down 63% year-on-year in the week ending 10th February, as were nine of the top ten Flowers and Gifts websites. The only top ten website in the category to enjoy a year-on-year increase was relative newcomer Moonpig Cards (www.moonpig.com), a site offering customised greeting cards.
Moonpig became the #3 most visited Flowers and Gifts website in the week ending 10th February, up from #31 the same week in 2006. The site's growth has been driven by increased brand awareness, with a fivefold increase in the share of UK internet searches for "moonpig" year-on-year, as well as through online marketing. The website is engaging in a paid search marketing campaign to attract visits, with 45% of the site's search traffic coming from paid listings in the past four weeks. Moonpig was the #3 website receiving visits from searches for "valentine cards" and "valentines cards" and was the #5 website receiving visits from searches for "valentine".
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| Shopping & Classifieds – Flowers & Gifts |
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Hitwise Search Intelligence data reveal the most popular search terms over the 4 weeks ending 17/2/2007 that resulted in traffic to Shopping & Classifieds - Flowers & Gifts websites. The results are ordered based on the volume of searches.
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| 1. |
interflora |
3.5 |
| 2. |
flowers |
1.52 |
| 3. |
ernest jones |
1.3 |
| 4. |
moonpig |
1.04 |
| 5. |
clinton cards |
0.69 |
| 6. |
valentines gifts |
0.68 |
| 7. |
thorntons |
0.66 |
| 8. |
beaverbrooks |
0.58 |
| 9. |
gadgets |
0.48 |
| 10. |
flying flowers |
0.48 |
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| eBay, Bebo and Argos top UK Search Terms in 2006 |
The Hitwise top search terms for 2006 reveal that the highest volume search terms across the web continue to be brand searches, highlighting that consumers are still using search engines to navigate the web.
The top search terms in the UK in 2006 were "ebay", "bebo" and "argos", whilst the top generic (i.e. non-branded, non-navigational) term was "games", ranking in at #28, followed by "weather", at #31.
If we compare this rank with the US, the term "lyrics" made it into the top 10, but otherwise, the top terms in the US were also navigational. However, the biggest difference between the US and the UK search data in 2006 was MySpace.
MySpace-related searches made up five of the top ten search terms across all categories in the US, whilst the highest MySpace term ranked #13 in the UK. This doesn't mean that UK consumers are not interested in social networking sites, as "bebo" was the #2 term in the UK in 2006.
Visits to Search Engines overtake visits to Adult sites
The internet has long had a tradition as a purveyor of vice, but that seems to be changing, with UK visits to adult and gambling sites taking a double-digit drop in December 2006 compared to the previous year. Visits to the Hitwise Adult category are down 20% year-on-year, while visits to the Gambling category are down 11%.
Those categories that have witnessed growth include Net Communities and Chat (up 34%), News and Media (up 24%) and Search Engines (up 22%). Search engines overtook adult as the largest category, based on share of UK internet visits, in October last year. In December, the gap was 1% between the two categories, but search continues to grow and adult continues to decline, so it is likely that the gap will widen.
Among the growth categories, it is no surprise that community sites such as MySpace, Bebo and YouTube are growing rapidly and fundamentally changing the relationship that businesses have with their customers.
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| BBC Weather - www.bbc.co.uk/weather |
Position for February 7 #13
Position for January 27 #36
Positions jumped: 23
With news of snow blanketing the country earlier this month, there was a flurry of online activity on weather and transport websites. The market share of UK internet visits to websites in the Weather category increased 76% on 7th February from the previous day, and the category hit its highest peak of any day in the past year. One in every 76 UK internet visits went to a weather website.
The share of UK internet searches for "weather" for the week ending 10th February nearly reached a record, falling just short of the level seen in July during the summer heat wave. Share of searches for "uk weather forecast" and "road conditions" both reached their highest peak over the past two years.
The number of unique search terms containing the word "weather" increased from 4,697 during the week ending 3rd February to over 10,000 unique terms for the week ending 10th February. The term "bbc weather" was highest volume term and the largest regional search terms were "weather london" and "weather in wales".
The most visited weather website in the UK was BBC Weather (www.bbc.co.uk/weather) accounting for nearly half of category visits (49.20%), with the website's market share of visits climbing 87% from the previous day. The site took a ranking of #13 among all websites, up from #26 the day before and the website's highest ranking over the past year. The Met Office (www.metoffice.gov.uk) ranked #2 with 15% of Weather category visits on 7th February.
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| Computers and Internet - Search Engines |
Search engines and directories of Internet content. Sites in this category usually act as gateways with links to the broader worldwide web, not just the content of the website. The data below is based on All sites » Weekly rankings for the week ending 17/02/2007 » Ranks by 'Visits'.
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| 75.8% |
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of traffic to this category was directed at domestic sites.
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| 1. |
Computers and Internet |
57.5% |
| 2. |
Computers and Internet - Search Engines |
20.3% |
| 3. |
Shopping and Classifieds |
9.6% |
| 4. |
Entertainment |
8.4% |
| 5. |
Computers and Internet - Net Communities and Chat |
7.4% |
| 6. |
Computers and Internet - Email Services |
7.1% |
| 7. |
Business and Finance |
5.6% |
| 8. |
Computers and Internet - Software |
4.5% |
| 9. |
News and Media |
4.3% |
| 10. |
Shopping and Classifieds - Auctions |
4.3% |
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| 1. |
Computers and Internet |
21.5% |
| 2. |
Shopping and Classifieds |
14.4% |
| 3. |
Entertainment |
11.1% |
| 4. |
Business and Finance |
9.8% |
| 5. |
Travel |
9.2% |
| 6. |
Computers and Internet - Search Engines |
6.8% |
| 7. |
Lifestyle |
5.3% |
| 8. |
Education |
5.3% |
| 9. |
Computers and Internet - Net Communities and Chat |
5.2% |
| 10. |
News and Media |
4.7% |
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